TIJUANA  Tijuana’s biggest cheerleaders saw more than brilliant red streaks in the Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles soccer players running and leaping during their inaugural playoff turn last week.

Reaching the postseason in Mexico’s premier league, unexpected for such a young team, was the latest intricately crafted feather in the weaving of this city’s proverbial cap.

Civic leaders, entrepreneurs and binational foodies have been working to create a new chapter in Tijuana’s existence — to move it from an identity of crisis plagued by drug violence and poverty that peaked in 2008 to one of sophistication, innovation and pride that many say is the birthright of the second-largest city on the west coast of North America.

A major part of that campaign has included paint-your-face soccer fandom, which erupted in Tijuana during Xolos matches when locals and transplants cheered and screamed.

“When you’re a major city like Tijuana, you want to have a major soccer team, you want to have a major international airport, you have to have major recognition for various aspects of the city,” said Baja California Tourism Secretary Juan Tintos. “That is why we are adding pieces every day that more resemble a major city and brings the community together.”

Few of Tijuana’s boosters would declare that tourism has returned to peak levels — before organized crime stained the area’s reputation — or that the maquiladora workforce has rebounded to pre-Great Recession levels. But they confidently highlight efforts that have earned their city a positive spotlight on national television, The New York Times, notable financial publications and top-tier travel and gourmet magazines.

Those initiatives include a new convention center between Tijuana and Rosarito Beach; a World Trade Center that opened last year; the second Tijuana Innovadora high-tech, business and arts conference planned for October; the second Baja California Culinary Fest, also set for October; a boom in fine-dining establishments in Tijuana; a Robert Redford movie scheduled for filming at a Rosarito Beach movie studio; and the recent increase in attendees at events such as the Newport-Ensenada Regatta.

Last year, the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute reported that Mexico’s northern border experienced a drop in drug-related violence in 2011 and that Tijuana saw some of the most marked decreases. In January, President Felipe Calderón visited Tijuana and kicked off the Strategic Economic Zone by eliminating import duties on 200 products, allowing local businesses to sell imported products at more affordable prices.

And just Saturday, the Rosarito Ensenada 50-mile bike ride welcomed 6,000 riders, three times as many participants as in 2008 but not quite at its peak of 10,000 a decade ago.

Tintos credits a strategy formed a few years ago by city and business leaders: aggressively promoting to the world Tijuana’s bid for innovation, advanced technology and improved safety.

“It’s little triumphs. We are winning battles but still need to win the war,” he said.

Despite Club Xolos’ elimination from the playoffs Saturday, the soccer fervor helped propel the city along its journey of revival.

The team brought international attention to Tijuana — considered by some as a castoff city with its tangle of concrete, poverty-stricken outskirts and binational problems — as it beat long-revered teams.